My thoughts on Region-locking:
Speaking from a guild with members all across the globe, region locking sucks. It makes it so much harder to find MMOs that we can all play together on. While we play many games, we're still looking for that one that will cater to all of us as many free shards of Ultima Online did so many years ago.
Devil's Advocate section:
If a game is so poorly designed that it can't handle world wide participation then I suppose a Region Lock is necessary. Rubber banding and general lag is not a good feeling in any MMO, though my personal experience is that I more resistant / can put up with more of it than other players that like to vocalize on general chat.
I suppose in PvP games it would make things pretty frustrating too for the lagged out person, while those with good connections would just get bored from the easy kills / annoyed at you giving the enemy team free points.
Your in-game encounters with folks from different countries, good or bad (any cultural tendencies that you’ve noticed)?
What? Jeromai is asking me to be racist? Ok, if he insists! Haha just kidding, douche bags are spread among all types of folk across the world (especially in games that allow PvP). That said there are also really nice people that I've encountered over the years, some of whom joined my guild - the ones that share our view always trying to help people and abstaining from PvP.
We've had members from Australia, Canada, all over the USA, Thailand, Belgium, Holland, England, Ireland, Singapore, Finland, Brazil, Lithuania, Germany, Slovenia, Israel, Croatia, Portugal, Turkey, and Georgia (the country, not the state).
The most eye opening talk for me though was with our Israeli guild mate. We voiced our concern for one of our English guild members years back when there was a terrorist bomb attack near where he lived. While he was ok, the Israeli guy was just like, "It's like that everyday here."
We lost contact with him after he was conscripted into the army, which is obligatory when he turned a certain age, and have never heard from him since.
Other on-going NBI activities:
Contains Moderate Peril still looking for NBI guest posts!
Gaming Discussion
Talkback Topic #2: Early Access and Kickstarter
NBI 2015: Poetry Slam!
Murf's Screenshot Challenge
This is one of many great things about games is that they have international communities that are brought together for the shared love of a hobby. One that I've seen blogs point out to me more and more.
ReplyDeleteHope your friend turns out ok.
Me too. Thanks Mr. Tyranny. :)
DeleteIt's so easy to forget about in what different circumstances the people we play with live. On the one hand it's a cool thing: you don't prejudice someone by what they look like or where they come from in games (which often happens unconsciously). On the other hand, well, what this story said.
ReplyDeleteYup yup. Thanks for the comment Ravvie. :)
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